Masato Sakai stars in film based on real-life marriage swindler

Actor Masato Sakai will be taking on the lead role in “Kuhio Taisa,” the second feature-length film directed by Daihachi Yoshida (“Funuke Domo, Kanashimi no Ai wo Misero”). The movie is based on writer Kazumasa Yoshida’s “Kekkon Sagishi Kuhio Taisa,” a nonfictional account of a real-life marriage swindler in Japan who took a total of roughly 100 million yen from several women between the 1970s and the 1990s. The model for Sakai’s character is “Captain Kuhio,” a Japanese man who passed himself off as a pilot for the U.S., telling grandiose lies to women and promising them a payout from the military if they married him. In Yoshida’s movie, the character will be portrayed more humorously, making mistakes such as spelling errors on his own business card.

The film’s female lead, one of Kuhio’s targets, will be played by Yasuko Matsuyuki. Hikari Mitsushima and Yuko Nakamura play two of his other victims, while Masaaki Uchino plays a bureaucrat. Filming started on the 11th and is scheduled to last until mid-April. Theatrical release is planned for this fall.